We found a playground by the apartment complex near the Erasmusbrug so we played there for a while but it's been so windy that day that Andrew decided that he had enough of it for then. So we made our way to the Maritime museum, dropped by at the grocery store to grab lunch for all of us and arrived at the museum shortly before 11am.
I used my D-card of the Holland pass and kids went in there for free. The museum was pretty impressive. First we made our way to the second floor where they had a historical exhibits of boats from all ages. Also, I have been to a public bathroom with two small kids to do #1 before, but for the first time I used a public bathroom with two small kids to do #2. With #1, you can just have Seth in a stroller and tell Andrew to just wait, but you can't really do that with #2 because you want him in your sight. Gladly the bathroom was extremely well kept, but there was something eerie about being in a small space with two kids (one in a sling, another in a stoller) taking care of business.
Then we went to the third floor of the museum, which was just totally awesome. First it had an exhibit where they showed how animals used to be transported across the ocean. They had real size animals that looked real, and Andrew had a blast. In the end, they had a small picture with bunch of stuffed animals.
The floor also had an annex that was a playroom for kids. I think we were there for at least an hour, but we could have stayed there lot longer. Both kids had a blast.
Since it was almost 1pm, we made our way downstairs and waited mommy to meet us to walk to the boat deck. Andrew and Seth both love these Dutch veggie sticks (basically chips) that are like only dollar at the store, so they munched on those while we waited.
Amanda got there shortly after our meeting time, and we headed toward the deck. Unfortunately, the boat was not in service, since apparently a boat crashed into their deck at Kinderdijk the evening before. You heard that right, some boat annihilated the entire deck the day before we got there. Some luck.
Certainly we were disappointed, especially Andrew who couldn't understand why we couldn't leave on our boat while other boats and other passengers were (not going to Kinderdijk). We even thought of taking some other boat that went to some other random places but figured that it wasn't worth it and decided to take a boat later, as we at this point knew about the Volcanic ash and we expected that our flight would likely be canceled.
So we had our snack-lunch by the deck, which we shouldn't have because it was really windy, and headed to toward some other random places in Rotterdam like Cubic house, an iconic contemporary library, etc.
Cubic house was hard to get to with a stroller, but it was worth using the E-card of our Holland ticket. The libary was pretty nice with spacious children's area.
At this point we had 0 euro in cash, and with one day left in Netherlands (or several days as it turned out in the end), we had limited options on where to get food. I had 6 euros for our lunch earlier for everyone, so we were all still pretty hungry. Since we were tired of going to a grocery store, we tried to find places to eat with kids. However, no places would take our American credit card (without PIN or for whatever other reason it may be), so we took a small amount of cash at ATM (because we didnt know how long we would stay there. We ended up taking out money out of ATM twice more before we left) and went to Le Marche, which is a self-service restaurant that I think is Swiss (Moevenpick, they have them in US at some locations, too). This turns out to be the right move, and we all had our fillings of vegetables which we lacked for the last 7 days. We grabbed some sandwiches and grapes at the grocery store on the way back (of course no grocery stores take credit cards) to eat for dinner. Andrew wanted a meatball, so we grabbed one as well only to find out it's some weird boiled fish paste ball that was coated in bbq sauce.
At the hotel, we got a hold of our hotel manager so that he can open up the front-desk where the computer was located so we can check our flight status online. Like Amanda said, our hotel manager was never there. It was extremely inconvenient and frustrating at most times, and in my opinion, they seemed sort of airheaded. I would ask something and then he wouldn't be listening to what I asked and goes off like 15 min on something remotely related to what I asked, leaving me with no answer and no energy to ask him anything further.
We found out that our flights were cancelled, as well as all the flights for the next 5 days. The online rebooking site was not working, so we thought we better call the Delta airline the next morning. It turned out this process was very complicated but that is a story for the next post.
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